In our paper, we propose to study a tandem language learning environment through desktop videoconferencing, or teletandem (Telles, 2009) for French and Chinese as foreign languages. Our study aims to understand how, through the videoconferencing environment, interlocutors position themselves and the interlocutor as experts or novices for the languages and/or topics discussed with a focus on the affordances they use.
In our paper, we propose to study a tandem language learning environment through desktop videoconferencing, or teletandem (Telles, 2009). In this environment, Chinese and French learners studying each other's language interact in pairs to develop their language skills. Our study aims to understand how, through the videoconferencing environment, interlocutors position themselves and the interlocutor as experts or novices for the languages and/or topics discussed. In our research, we take an ecological and interactionist approach to the study of discursive positioning in the videoconferencing environment. Firstly, our approach is ecological insofar as, on the one hand, the data were collected in a natural situation (Bronfenbrenner, 1979 p. 28), the interlocutors having complete control over the flexibility of the environment (Develotte & Drissi, 2013); on the other hand, because the analysis of interactions is conducted not within a technocentric perspective, but according to the perception of the interaction and of the environment by the subjects in terms of affordances (Gibson, 1979), both communicative (Hutchby, 2001) and learning affordances (Van Lier, 2004). Secondly, our approach is interactionist in that we use conversational analysis tools to study the discursive positionings of interlocutors regarding spoken / learned languages [quotrightB?]‹[quotrightB?]‹(Reichert & Liebscher, 2012) and the topics of interaction. In our analyses, we will question the relevance of the categories of analysis, notably the categories of "affordance", "manipulation" and "investment" of multimodality on the screen, according to the principle of sequentiality (Dausendschon-Gay, 2010 p. 99) and the principle of integration of semiotic resources (Baldry & Thibault, 2006). The results of the analyses show the emergence of certain 'sign complexes' (Bezemer & Kress, 2016 p. 23) and their routinisation during successive encounters.
